"So he calls me up and he's like, 'I still love you.' This is EXHAUSTING."

So Taylor Swift says, "never ever ever," and Adam Levine says "baby, give me one more night."

Who do you listen to?

It's so much easier to listen to Adam, right?  I mean...look at him...

But this is the most important thing he sings, y'all: 

"I'll be waking up in the morning, probably hating myself.
And I'll be waking up, feeling satisfied but guilty as hell."

Mhmmm. 

If you are one of these people that make your friends REAL nervous when they see you looking at your phone in the bar because maybe you have a contact in your phone that, instead of an actual human name, reads "DO NOT CALL THIS MOTHAF***A" and yet...you know you probably gonna call that mothaf***a anyway...(or that bitch...could be a girl...this is a not a "let's hate on men" post)...it is a NEW year.  Get it together.

If you have been in a relationship with someone who has broken up with you only to call you crying a few weeks later saying that they were sorry and they do NOT know what they were thinking, and then you get back with them for a few months only to have them break up with you AGAIN, rinse, and repeat...it is a NEW year.  Get it together.

If you are only reading this because you decided to take a 5 minute break from Facebook stalking your ex...it is a NEW year.  Get it TOGETHER.

Recycling is good for the environment, but it is NOT good for your love life.  There is an incredible freedom and inner peace that comes from declaring with absolute certainty that you are done with someone.  That peace doesn't come until after the heart-crushing feeling of devastating loss wears off...but...the feeling does wear off, and then you are left with the peace.

So next time you get the urge to go digging for bad ideas in the compost heap that is your dating history, remind yourself of this:  there is someone out there for you who is going to make you happier than you ever dreamed you could be and you have not met this person yet. 

And you know what? Maybe you ARE meant to be with your high school sweetheart.  Maybe the 47th time around with your ex will be the charm. Maybe your exboyfriend will come running up to you on the streets of Paris like Big did to Carrie and rescue you from a life of loneliness only to break your heart one final time before actually marrying you.  But you can't live your life thinking like that, because if any of those things are going to happen, they won't happen because you forced them. 

So for now, just sing it out like Taylor and repeat after me:  "We are NEVER EVER EVER getting back together."

Keep the faith and keep it moving.

Our Secret Shame: Creative Editing with Our Friends

I didn't start watching the HBO show Girls when it first came out because it looked sort of tragic and ridiculous.  Eventually I heard a few people say it was good, so I checked it out.  (Plus, it's on HBO, and I've never seen an HBO series that I didn't like.)

Basically, HBO and Showtime should just make all the shows.  Like, all of them.  Like this:

or this:

I've watched about half of the first season now, and it is, in fact, both tragic and ridiculous.  But it's also sort of awesome.  And scary.

This is Hannah.

Profoundly insecure, yet firmly convinced of her own emotional depth and sharp wit.

This is Adam.

Profoundly douchey.  Enough said.

I love watching Hannah screw around with this absurdly bizarre guy and then seeing the altered version of events she recounts to her friends.  She never actually lies to them, but what she conveys is never the whole truth.  She gets creative with her editing, keeping the really fucked up bits a secret, and telling them only the parts she can bear mixed together with the little glimmers of hope he gives her.

In one episode, she gives him "THE SPEECH."  Any girl who has ever had a not-boyfriend knows this speech.  This is the "what are we, what are we doing, no, I'm not pressuring you to be a boyfriend, but can't you do all the things that boyfriends do and we just won't call you that, I can't do this anymore, because I don't think you give a shit about me, but please, I beg of you, tell me I'm wrong" speech. 

Not that I've ever given this speech or anything.  Ahem.  Moving on...

As she's delivering her touching little monologue, Adam just stands there like an asshole, shirtless in all his pasty white glory, pants unbuttoned, staring at her while she's talking with a blank expression on his face.  As soon as he sees an opportunity, he starts touching her.  He doesn't even really pull her in for the kiss either.  He just kind of touches her, like he's unbuttoning her shirt or something.  The poor girl stands there, lip quivering, and then she is the one who moves in and kisses him.  You can see the expression on her face when she knows she is going to give up and give in and undo everything she just did and have sex with him.  Because once you've poured your heart all over the place and had a guy stare blankly back at you for like five minutes straight, what the hell else is there to do but have sex? 

When she tells the story later to her friend, she focuses mostly on the part where he touches her face and says, "Be who you are."  She leaves out the fact that the conversation actually went like this.

Hannah:  Why didn't you text me back?
Adam:  After you sent the picture?  Well I jerked off to it.
Hannah:  You jerked off to it?
Adam:  No, you looked like you were getting fucked by a cucumber.
Hannah:  I can't take a serious naked picture of myself.  It's not who I am.
Adam:  So be who you are.

All she gets out of that is that he touched her face and said, "Be who you are."  It doesn't matter that he talked about jerking off and getting fucked by cucumbers or that when she first got to his apartment, he told her that her eyebrows made her look like a Mexican teenager (although to be fair, that was not an inaccurate assessment). 

You be the judge.

But anyway, the rest of it doesn't matter.  She holds on for dear life to "Be who you are" and that's the version that she tells her friends later.  It's enough for her to even say that they are "basically together."

Dear.  God. 

Is this what we are ALL doing?

I will admit, I've gotten creative with editing before.  I, too, dare I say it, am a writer, after all.  I've left out absurd things guys have said to me when telling the story to my friends because of embarrassment and because I wanted to remember the edited version of how it happened instead of the less pleasant true version.  I've been trying to do that less, because what I'm learning is that it's the absurd bits that make for the most interesting story-telling. 

But it can't just be us writers and wannabe writers who are doing this. 

I had to ask a couple other friends for confirmation, and sure enough, yes, people are leaving shit out all over the place. 

Guy to Girl:  You're like the prettiest thing ever.  I'd like to spank you with a Trapper Keeper.
Girl to Guy:  Um...what?
Girl to Her Friends:  He basically told me that I was the prettiest girl in the whole world!

...

No.

Although, the Trapper Keeper does have interesting textures...

Could be fun?

There are firm believers out there that say it's important for things between two people in a relationship to remain between those two people, but so many of us can't help but tell our friends every little detail.  For me, if I haven't shared it, it didn't happen. 

Furthermore, if you are dating a creative type, you're really in for it. You will surely end up written about in a book, a movie, or a song, and only if you're lucky will names be changed to protect the guilty.

Now I was told once by a guy who was concerned about the way he was being portrayed to my friends that people tend to have a handle on the good stuff so they don't talk about it as much.  They don't have a handle on the bad stuff yet, so they need to talk it out.  He was right, to an extent, but after seeing this episode of Girls, I realized that the flip side is also true.

Bottom line is:  if you're going to share your business with your friends, whatever business you choose to share, paint an accurate picture of the situation--the good, the bad, and the ugly.  You owe that yourself, to the person you're talking about, and to the friends whom you trust enough to hear these details.  Otherwise, you'll end up convincing yourself that the version you told your friends is true, which could really backfire later.

Or, you could act like a grown up and keep your business to yourself.  But let's not get crazy.

Reason

Does everything really happen for a reason?

Sure, but sometimes that reason is just that people suck.

Some people are fond of certain cliches, old sayings that they can pull out of their back pockets whenever things seem particularly shitty.  "God has a plan."  "Things always work out for the best."  "Everything will be okay in the end.  If it's not okay, it's not the end."  "Everything happens for a reason."

No.  I don't really agree with all of that, not the way that some people do.  Because how can anyone really be accountable for anything if everything that has ever happened was meant to happen in exactly one way? 

I think life gives you opportunities.  I think some forks in the road take you to completely opposite outcomes and some circle back around and meet at the same place no matter what you do. I think some things happen as a result of the altruistic actions of genuine, kind-hearted people.  Other things happen because people are selfish and cruel.  And still other things just...happen.  And instead of comforting ourselves with empty cliches, why can't we just sit back a moment and take inventory.  What did I lose?  What did I gain?  What can I do now?  How can I work with what I've got?

And, of course, the most important of all:  What did I learn?

My dad always says that one of the most frustrating things that he sees people do is insist on learning hard lessons for themselves.  "Why do you need to burn yourself to know that the stove is hot?" he says. "The burns of other people aren't enough evidence for you? Don't touch the stove. It's simple."

But it's not simple, is it?

What is that inner voice in us that challenges us, that double-dog dares us, to pass a hand through the flame? That deludes us into thinking our skin is thicker than everyone else's and we will be the first not to get burned?

I'll tell you who that inner voice is. It's Gary Marshall. And Nancy Meyers. And Nora Ephron.  And all the fine folks at 20th Century Fox, Paramount, and every place else. It's the writers for all the shows on the WB (and yes, I mean the WB, because that's what it was back then) and the sitcoms that aired on ABC's TGIF Friday night line-up.

Movies and television are part of the problem.  In that world, in the world of storytelling, everything DOES happen for a reason.  You don't show someone sneezing unless they are about to get sick.  Screenwriting should be an integral part of the school curriculum. Children need to know early on how little screenwriting has to do with what happens in real life.  In real life, sometimes a sneeze is just a sneeze. 

And that is not to say that I discourage the dreamers and the believers and those that aim to accomplish the impossible, because take them out of the picture, and you have just erased the things I love most in this world. It is only to say that as you grow up, you realize that just because something always has been doesn't mean it always will be.  That some people who pop back up in your life by chance didn't do so as part of some grand plan.  That life, this crazy, wonderful, horrible, amazing thing we call life, is sometimes just fucking RANDOM. 

Everything happens for a reason, yes, but that is not the same thing as saying that everything that happens is SUPPOSED to happen.  We have all been victims of injustice.  We have all been blessed.  We mourn the tragedies, we celebrate the triumphs, and we never stop fighting for the number of wins to be greater than the number of losses.  Because, yes, everything will eventually be okay.  But then it won't be okay.  And then it will be okay again.  And on and on it will go.  And we will continue to make the best of it.

Resolved

This is something I shared with some of my close friends yesterday, but I want to put it out there to the universe.

I have never really surprised myself.

For all intents and purposes, my life has gone pretty much the way I knew (and often feared) it would. In a lot of ways, I've made some pretty stereotypical mistakes that I was always warned against making. Despite all the warnings, I was never able to stop myself from learning those lessons the hard way. At the same time, I've accomplished the things I was always fairly certain I would accomplish. I'm still good at the same things I've always been good at. I still have versions of the same things I have always had.

I have challenged myself--yes. But I have never surprised myself.

It was a challenge to buy my own place, and while I did it with entirely my own money, I would never have been able to do it without the guidance, support, and direction of my family. I am one thesis away from my masters degree, and while I know completing it is going to be a challenge, and I will be proud of myself when it's done, I won't be surprised. I won't think to myself, I never thought I could do this. I've always been good at school; it makes sense that I chose to further my education in this way.

So my New Year's Resolution is not just to challenge myself, but to surprise myself.

My whole life, I have wanted to play the piano. We've always had a piano, but I was always afraid to try and practice at home, because let's face it, a beginner practicing the piano is not pleasant listening. I've taken a couple classes in college. I'm a singer, so I know music basics. I know what the notes on the page mean, but I'm not, as they say, "fluent" in reading music. I know chords, but I don't have the muscle memory yet to play seamlessly without making tons of mistakes. And I don't have the coordination yet to get my right hand to do one thing while my left hand does another.

This Christmas, my parents gave me my very own keyboard, complete with headphone jack so that I can practice without disturbing my roommate. By the end of the year, I will know how to play well enough to, at the very least, accompany myself live on at least three songs. I will prove it by playing at an open mic night before the year is out.

This is not something that is being graded. This is not something that has to be done. This is not something I am even sure I will be able to do. But it is something I want to do for me. A little dream of mine that I want to make come true. A surprise for myself.

Do we really choose our friends?

Sometimes I think that we have as little control over who our best friends are as we do over the people with whom we fall in love.  There are a lot of adages that talk about picking friends, like, "Friends are the family you choose" and the ever popular, "You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose..." but when it comes down to it, do we really choose our friends? 

On a whim, I decided to pick up the book Something Borrowed at the grocery store a few weeks ago.  The trailer for the movie looked good and I was bored during my lunch hour, so I spent the $7.99 on something that would last me longer than a copy of Us Weekly and probably be at least slightly more interesting.  If you've seen the promos for the movie, you know that the story is about a woman who falls in love with her best friend's fiance.  The two women, despite the fact that they are best friends, could not be more different.  Their friendship originated out of geography--they grew up on the same street.  There are many times (in the book at least, because I haven't seen the movie) when the main character talks about how despite all of her friend's faults, she couldn't really stop being friends with her if she tried.  They are inextricably linked.  They didn't really choose the friendship; the friendship chose them.

While we are not born with a biological link to our best friends, we don't pick them out of a catalog either.  Sometimes we meet them when we're young and despite the lack of biology involved, they seem as integral to our lives and to who we are as our family does.  We've known them for so long that we can't remember a time when they weren't there.  We would do anything for them, beat down anyone who tried to mess with them.  We mourn their losses and rejoice in their triumphs.  They aren't like family--they are family.

Sometimes we meet our best friends at school, at work, through a mutual acquaintance, on a sports team, or in some other group activity.  We get to talking with them and we see something that makes us want to know more--a shared interest, a similar belief system, a compatible sense of humor.  We hang out a few times and the conversations become less trivial, more meaningful.  Then one day, like the first exchange of I-love-you's between people in a relationship, we throw down the title:  "You're my best friend."

Yesterday, I had a difficult conversation with someone who was considering "breaking up" with their best friend over this classic situation:  I like this person, my best friend likes this person, my best friend knows I like this person, my best friend has decided to pursue and now date this person anyway.  It's against the girlfriend code, it's against the bro-code, it's against everybody's code--it's just not a cool thing.

I've been in this situation--twice.  I was seeing a guy and then before I even knew that it was completely over, I found out that he had started seeing my best friend.  The thing is that the way I felt about the guy was the secondary issue.  The harder relationship to lose was the one with my best friend.  It was absolutely devastating.  In both cases, I ended up staying friends with the girl.  There was a lot of crying, a lot of bad times that we had to go through first, but in the end, we were still friends.  Right or wrong, I couldn't let them go.

Most of my best friendships that have ended have been as a result of distance, time, growing up and growing apart.  A lot of these people get relegated to the category of "old friends" which is a really wonderful relationship.  The relationship you have with the person who isn't your best friend anymore but is still your friend is kind of amazing.  It's the healthiest relationship you'll ever have.  In that relationship, if you've kept in touch, you get all the benefits of memories and the history and the comfort level without having to deal with the drama or the responsibility.  And if you don't think there is a certain level of responsibility that you owe to your best friend, ask yourself if you've ever had this conversation:  "Come on.  You're my best friend. You gotta do this for me."  Yeah.

Fighting with your best friend is one of the most awful things, especially if it's a serious fight, because the one person you really want to talk to about how awful you feel is not an option.  I've only ever had one best friendship that really ended, and I mean ENDED in a huge fireball of awfulness.  That was one of the worst heartbreaks I've ever experienced. 

I was watching Khloe and Lamar this morning (the Kardashians and all of their reality TV drama are one of my guilty pleasures).  As I was watching Khloe and her best friend fighting with each other and crying, I just couldn't help but marvel at how complicated friendships can be.  Being someone's best friend, like being in a relationship, is about two people.  And people are friggen complicated. 

You do have control over the people in your life with whom you associate, but associating with someone is not the same thing as being someone's best friend.  I have had a lot of conversations with people (and been on both sides of the conversation) that went like this:  "So-and-so is driving me crazy, but wtf am I gonna do, (s)he's my best friend." 

The truth is that our best friends are not always the best people that we know.  We may have other friends that treat us better, that are more consistent, that are more dependable.  But the connection isn't there.  We fall in friendship-love with Judas, baby.  We just can't help it.

Some of us are lucky enough to have the kind of best friend that is the best person that we know.  Not only are they the person who comes over in the middle of the night when we have a crisis and need a shoulder to cry on, but they are also the person who never cancels plans at the last minute, who comes to all of our games or concerts or speeches or whatever it is that is important to us, and who doesn't think it's better to ask forgiveness than permission.

For better or for worse, our best friends are our best friends.  Most of the time, we couldn't change it if we wanted to.

I can't speak no English real good.

I've started reading for leisure again.  Right now, I'm just reading silly chick lit, in which I've never been interested before, but which I have found to be sort of soothing to read during my lunch breaks at work.  I spend all day explaining things to people.  Some of it is complex and deserving of an explanation from someone who is well-versed in the material, and some of it is painfully simple to understand.  The point is that on my breaks from this drudgery, I just want something mildly entertaining and easy to follow to occupy my time and give my mind a break.

Tonight I was curled up in my chaise lounge reading one of these books, and I came across this sentence:

"If Leo thinks that...well, he has another think coming."

Another think coming?

My mom has always been the person in our family to rule on all matters of uncertainty.  Whenever my brother and I have a disagreement, the one who is more sure of their point of view throws down the ultimate challenge:  "EVEN ASK MOM." 

So I went to ask my mom if this was a typo or if someone like me could have gotten this wrong.  Could someone who loves words, someone who has never had the most sophisticated vocabulary, but who considers herself to have a fairly decent grasp of grammar, who never has trouble with who versus whom, who hates incorrect expressions like "a whole nother," who loves to point out when other people use incorrect expressions like that with an air of superiority because she would never make such a mistake, and who would NEVER use a run-on sentence like this unless purposefully doing so to be obnoxious possibly have been misusing this expression?

My mom said it was a typo, that the expression was definitely "another thing coming."  My dad actually disagreed with her.  My dad is not the go-to guy on issues of grammar and spelling.  Ever.  But the more I thought about it, the more it started to make sense.  If you think that, then you've got another think coming. 

So I Googled it, and sure enough, over 7 million results for "you've got another think or thing coming."  The hits that didn't have to do with the Judas Priest song all had to do with "another thing coming" as a mispronunciation of the expression.  It's supposed to be a purposefully ungrammatical joke.  I saw it best explained on a language forum that it would just not sound quite so snappy if you said, "If you think that, you're wrong, so wait for some new thoughts to come."

Today will be known as the day I actually learned something from chick lit and the day my dad actually ruled correctly on a grammar question when my mother did not.  Oh, the great pain of disillusionment. 

Death, Life, and Rebirth

Last week, my best friend told me that he'd received a text message that a friend he'd known from back home had just died.  A few days later (it might have even been the following day), while having dinner with him in a restaurant, he came back from the bathroom to find me staring at the same kind of message on my own cell phone--someone I knew from high school had just died.  They say that death comes in threes, and this time was not an exception.  The day after that, my mom told me that a friend and neighbor of my grandparents had just died.  Three deaths in as many days, none of them directly affecting me, all of them touching the lives of people that I knew and loved.

My mom told me that my grandparents were trying to help the surviving spouse of their neighbor with some of the necessary arrangements.  It prompted my mom to urge my grandmother to seriously think about the kinds of things that she would want and make sure that she made it known to us.  It prompted me to ask the same question of my mother, because as we all know, and as I had been reminded of that week, death can come for any of us at any time.  It even had me thinking about what I would want for myself.

That same night, my mom and I ended up watching Tuck Everlasting, which is about a family that can never die.  It's a movie that came out nine years ago, based on a book that came out over thirty years ago, but I had never read it or seen the movie.  My mom loves this movie for some reason, and while I was not overly impressed with it, there was a quote that stuck with me:  "If there's one thing I've learned about people, it's that many will do anything, anything not to die. And they'll do anything to keep from living their life. Don't be afraid of death, Winnie. Be afraid of the unlived life."

Now, I have never really feared death.  I find it mysterious because I don't know what I believe about what happens afterwards, but I don't really fear it.  I fear pain.  Life may be a gift, but it's also difficult, and I certainly don't want to go through it tragically disfigured or paralyzed from the neck down.  Maybe that's not the popular response, but it's how I feel, and I think a lot of people feel the same.  And I fear loss, because it is its own kind of pain, and sometimes, a more terrible kind.  I fear the heart-wrenching pain of losing my brother, a parent, or a best friend, and the seemingly insurmountable task of waking up the next day and moving on without them.

Sometimes I do wonder about my own death, but more about how I will be remembered.  Another unpopular thing to do, because it is a mark of vanity, I suppose, but still something I believe is relatively common.  I wonder if people that never really cared anything about me would say that they were sad that I died.  I wonder if people who never really knew me would leave trite comments on my facebook wall about how sorry they were that we didn't know each other better.  I wonder if my funeral would be attended by people that had no business being there.

I wonder about these things every once in a while, but the only thing I really fear about my own death follows with the quote from the movie:  I fear that I will die before I have lived.  I look at the life I have now, and while there is so much for which I am grateful, I don't feel like an active participant in it.  I feel like I am rolling along while it is happening to me.  I know that the only person who can change that is me, but as with so many things, it is much easier said than done.

Today is Easter Sunday.  Regardless of your religious beliefs, and despite the fact that it falls uncharacteristically late this year...AND the fact that we live in South Florida, Easter still symbolizes the beginning of spring.  So today I am thinking about renewal and rebirth.  Today I am thinking about ways to jump start my life.  To stop letting it happen to me and to start just living it.  I am thinking about ways that I can find myself telling Kate Norris on January 1st of 2012 that 2011 was, in fact, "the year."